When in Rome (or Japan)...

Last Saturday (Oct. 18) I went to sushi for lunch.  I know what you are thinking, "Julie went to sushi for lunch?  She doesn't even like seafood!"  This is true.  I have never liked seafood and I still don't, but I went for sushi with my friend, Michelle.

Cucumber Rolls are oishii!

There you go--proof I ate sushi.  I always knew there was non-seafood sushi at sushi restaurants/bars just like there is always a token non-seafood entree at a seafood restaurant; I just didn't think there would be enough options for a complete non-seafood meal.  It turns out I was wrong.

So last Saturday was the last day of soccer.  My friend Michelle was in the same position I was.  Her daughter is on my youth team and their game was at 10:00 am.  My women's team, which Michelle plays on, played at 3:30 pm.  Both games were at Nimitz and while having four hours between games gave us the time to go home in between, it really didn't make sense to do that so we hung out together all day.  Michelle suggested going to sushi for lunch.  I was reticent, as you could imagine, until Michelle mentioned she doesn't eat seafood either and that it was her favorite restaurant.  This intrigued me and I figured, "When in Rome..." so I agreed.

I'm really not sure what the restaurant is called.  It is located at the new mall near Main Base.  Everyone just refers to it as "sushi" or "sushi-go-round."  I think the actual name is Sushiro.  I was able to find out the website from the receipt.  It's really cool because there are all these individual booths with a conveyor belt that runs alongside them.  Each booth has a touch screen ordering system (with an English language function).  All the food travels along the conveyor belt just like luggage on a luggage belt at the airport.  There are various items where you can just grab the plate off the belt or you can order a specific food using the touch screen and then it will arrive on a color-coded serving tray on the belt.  The atmosphere alone was just worth the trip.

Sushi conveyor belt.  White plates are "regular" sushi.  Yellow
plates have wasabi added.  The touch screen is at the top.

The table had everything you might need:  a box of chopsticks,
two different types of soy sauce, ginger, green tea powder and
a spigot for hot water.  There is also a pricing guide--round plates
cost Y100, square plates cost Y180.

I had cucumber rolls, which I totally knew they would have, but I didn't expect them to have salad, ramen, french fries (Michelle's kids had them) or even ice cream.  I tried some of Michelle's favorites like prosciutto with apples and roasted pork with scallions as well as something she'd never tried like Japanese roast beef.  After nearly one of each of all the non-seafood items, we were full.  Michelle pushed a button on the touch screen and nearly instantaneously a person came to our table.  He counted our plates to calculate the cost (using a specialized ruler so he didn't have to actually count thus expediting the process), entered it into a hand-held scanner, scanned a laminated sheet with a bar code on it and gave it to us.  Then to pay we took the sheet to the register and the bar code gets scanned again bringing up the information that was calculated at the table and we then paid.

Various types of sushi and bowls of ramen.

Sushi plates ready to be counted.

It was all a very interesting (and very Japanese) experience.  I was glad Michelle took me (and treated me) to lunch there.  I would go there again but I wouldn't call it a favorite place.  I was excited to have Matt and the kids go there so they could experience it for themselves.  Today we did just that.  As I expected, Matt and Leah liked it and would go again but Aaron wanted nothing to do with it.  I ordered him french fries and he ate only four (and that was only so he could have ice cream).  He refused to try anything, even if it was stuff he likes, such as ham, because it was "Japanese."  Ironically, Japanese ice cream seems to be the exception to Aaron's self-imposed ban on Japanese food.

Matt trying the prosciutto.  The roast beef was his favorite.

Leah liked the plain ramen noodles, the chicken nuggets,
the rice from the sushi (but not the meat) and of course,
the ice cream.

In between the two Saturday sushi visits, I went out to eat lunch one day with my friend Kathy (obviously not my FL friend Kathy, but my Australian friend Kathy who lives here) at a place near Hario called Brick.

The Brick is the tiniest of places about ten minutes from where we live.  It is a bakery and lunch place and it is the size of a very small house.  There are maybe about a dozen (mostly two-person) tables at most for seating.  There are even less parking spaces available.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of the building to show how small it was.  I have driven by it a bunch of times and always wondered what it was like to eat there but it never seemed open to me.  Kathy said, "it is like having three old ladies fix you lunch."  Lunch is available from 11:30 am - 2:00 pm and there are three sets (think combo meals) to choose from:  a sandwich set, a pizza set and a hamburger set.  It was almost like a mini-buffet and it only cost Y500 (a little less than $5 with the current exchange rate).  We each got the hamburger set.  (Japanese people, in my experience, do not cook pizza correctly.  It's always soggy.)  It included a small hamburger, a salad served in a cupcake liner (to give you a sense of size), three slices of fruit, a tall shot glass amount of soup, something that resembled a bread pudding, piece of cake about the size of a eraser and a small cream puff.  It also included a drink which is a choice of orange juice or coffee.  Kathy said she brought her husband, Nick, once and he left hungry but it was plenty for us.

The hamburger set at the Brick.

I would go back to the Brick again too but again, not a favorite.  It is hard to beat the value for the money, though.  Between the recent onsen experience and eating at the local restaurants, I am feeling very Japanese-y these last few weeks.  When in Sasebo....

Just Keep Swimming (Some More)

This month (October) Leah and Aaron started swim lessons again.  They have 30 minute lessons every Monday and Wednesday afternoon at the indoor pool from now until May.  Last year, Leah was very motivated and she learned how to swim.  (Last year she could swim enough not to drown, but she was very inefficient with her movements and would easily tire.)  She was thrilled when was able to pass the swim test and was able to use the water slide and the diving board at the outdoor pool this summer.  I don't know if Leah has a goal in mind for this year so we'll see how hard she works.  For Matt and I, our goal for her is to make her a stronger swimmer and of course, it's great exercise.  Leah has the same instructor she had the second half of last season, Alex.  Leah and Alex are a great match, personality-wise, so between her love of the water and her relationship with Alex, Leah will have another great year at swimming.

Leah and Alex

 Aaron had a very challenging year last year, not limited to just his swimming lessons.  He had no desire whatsoever last year to learn how to swim.  In all fairness, he was afraid to put his face in the water for a good portion of the year, so just to be able to jump in and go underwater for him was a big deal.  Last year Aaron didn't always want to go to swim lessons and most of the time he just wanted to play and splash water.  It didn't help that Aaron's instructor, Hirofumi, enabled him.  Matt and I had been telling Aaron all summer that he needs to learn to swim, that it is an important life skill he needs to have and that swimming lessons are not playtime.  We also sweetened the deal for him by giving him an incentive:  if he learns to swim before we move (May 2015), then we will go to a water park when we get back to the US.  I don't know if that is making him work hard or if it is a combination of that and he is maturing, etc., but he has been doing really, really well so far.  He's floating and gliding and he's listening and following directions (a majority of the time).  And while routine and continuity works best for Aaron, he's had three different instructors for five lessons and it hasn't seemed to phase him.  The problem seems to be that besides Alex, there is not currently another instructor that works both Monday and Wednesdays during the time of our lessons.  I think they've sorted it out going forward so Aaron will have one instructor (Victor) every Monday, and another instructor (Chiaki) every Wednesday.  Chiaki, as you might guess from the name (which it took me a couple tries to not say "Chachi"), is Japanese.  She's very nice and she cracked me up the other day trying to explain Aaron's progress to me.  She speaks English, better than most Japanese people, but there is still a disconnect.  She was trying to convey that Aaron can dog paddle almost 2m so if he fell in, he should be able to reach the side of the pool safely.  What she said though is "Aaron went 2m without drowning."  I was able to work out what she was saying and we both laughed.

Aaron and Chiaki

Aaron's progress, though, over a short period of time is pretty remarkable.  At his last lesson he was diving to the bottom of the pool to pick up items where last year he would have just used his foot to bring the toy to the surface to keep his face out of the water.  For our Tampa Bay friends, I think there will be a trip to Adventure Island this May/June.  Yea!

Splish, Splash the Rich Family Takes a Bath

It's hard to believe we have less than a year left here in Japan.  (No, we don't know where we will be going next yet.)  We've been putting a list of some things we want to do/places we want to go before we move.  Initially, we thought we might go to Kagoshima this weekend (Oct. 11-13) since Monday is a holiday (Columbus Day).  Kagoshima is the southern-most prefecture in Kyushu, and there is all kinds of cool things to do (aquarium, space center, volcano, beaches, etc.).  Unfortunately, it is also a Japanese holiday on Monday (Sports Day) so with the Japanese three-day weekend, there was no vacancies for a four-person room in any of the hotels.  Looking on the bright side, it turned out fortuitous as Typhoon Vongfong, at the time of this writing, has passed over Okinawa and will most certainly hit Kagoshima.  (Luckily, the typhoon is forecasted to travel on the east coast of Japan and we live on the west coast.)  So instead of traveling we decided to something on our list:  go to an onsen.

An onsen (sounds exactly as it it written) is a Japanese bath.  Typically, in Japan, most homes have a bathroom that is completely tiled with the shower part outside the tub.  The tub is usually very deep and is not for cleaning oneself, but for soaking and relaxing.  Onsens are public baths (separated by gender).  They consist of three parts.  The first is like a locker room where there are cubbies to put your clothes.  The second is the shower area to get clean.  The third is the big tub/pool for soaking.  The water in the tub is very warm, almost like a jacuzzi without the jets.  Some of the nicer onsens may have more than one tub--one might be filled with spring water while another may have an essential oil infused into the water.  We went to a family onsen at a local hotel & spa.  In the family onsen, we get a smaller version that is private for just us (with a locking door), which was good since the kids were very excited and somewhat hyper at our onsen appointment.  Had we been with the general population, I don't think it would have been relaxing for many people. 

The website onsenjapan.net has good information for those who want more information about onsens.

Our onsen adventure took place at the Hotel Lorelei, which also has a "wellness spa."  For my friends back home, I thought of it as a lesser Safety Harbor Resort and Spa.  There is a separate check-in for the spa and after checking in and paying, we were led to lockers where we exchanged our shoes for indoor shoes.  We then walked upstairs to the second floor where an attendant met us, took us to a door and there we exchanged our indoor slippers for outdoor slippers.  (This is all very common in Japan.)  The onsens at the Hotel Lorelei where we were are open-air.  There were separate, small wooden buildings with their own entrances (and locking doors).  There were walls on three sides with the fourth side really being a tall hedge.  We could look out and see Huis Ten Bosch (the Dutch theme park that is walking distance from us).  The roof consisted of wooden beams covered with partially-opaque clear plexiglass.  The whole thing gave you the feeling of being outside while retaining privacy (and protection from the elements, which was important as it had rained twice prior to our appointment).

The Hotel Lorelei is about ten minutes from our apartment.

It has a wellness spa where we enjoyed a family onsen experience.

It also has a restaurant...

...that is a beer restaurant (whatever that means).

The onsen had three distinct sections.  The
first was a changing "room," that was enclosed
to prevent your clothes from getting wet.

The second was a washing station, with
a stool, a bowl and a shower.

The third section was the bath.  It had adjustable temperature
controls (the water flows from the rocks like a water feature)
and some "benches" on two of the sides.

Overall it was an enjoyable experience although as I mentioned, the kids were pretty hyper so I wouldn't call it totally relaxing.  It cost us about $30 for one hour so it wasn't crazy-expensive, but also not something we would do every week.  I think we will probably go again at least once before we leave. 


Ahh, this is the life!

Quote of the Month: October 2014

Trying to get caught up over the holiday weekend so I'm starting with October's quote of the month. 

I think that you just gotta have the bad days to love the good days even more.  Trust me, I would know. - Alexander Cooper from the movie, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day.

Friday (October 10) We saw Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day. It was really funny.  We give it a thumbs up.  The Cooper family (the family in the movie) really did have the worst day ever but in the end, they were able to turn it around.  It reminded me of my very bad day (parking ticket, dead battery, missing a chance at meeting Mo Willems, Leah having a bloody nose while riding on I-95S, and being at a literal standstill on said interstate as a tornado passed across the road five miles south of us).  It was while crawling (figuratively, as I was driving my car) on I-95S near Quantico, avoiding fallen tree limbs, that I made the conscious decision to look for the bright side instead of dwelling on the negative.  For instance, instead of complaining how long it took to get home, I was thankful that we weren't in the direct path of the tornado.  From that day, I've tried to remember this and always focus on the positive rather than the negative.  Steve Carell's character in the movie, Ben Cooper, does what I do times 100.  I think I would have cracked had I had such a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day but it just goes to show you, no matter how bad you have it, there is always someone else out there that has it worse.